This day in history - April 8

[seamusTX]

1513 - Juan Ponce de León claimed Florida for Spain. The Spanish and Portuguese at that time had no idea that a continent lay northwest of the Caribbean islands, though the Vikings and other Europeans had been voyaging to what we call North America for centuries.

1935 - Congress passed the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935, which funded the Works Progress Administration. The WPA ultimately employed 8 million American workers. Projects built by WPA workers are ubiquitous to this day.

1952 - During the Korean War, President Harry S. Truman seized the steel industry to prevent a nationwide strike which would have limited the U.S. supply of war materiel. Less than two months later, the Supreme Court ruled the seizure invalid, and the unions struck. The strike was ultimately ended with the unions agreeing to terms that the steel companies had proposed months earlier.

In that era, the federal government exercised wage and price controls and rationing, the like of which have not been seen in half a century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1952_steel_strike" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

1970 - The Senate rejected President Richard Nixon's nomination of G. Harrold Carswell, then a judge of the 5th Circuit Court, to the Supreme Court.

Southern influence in the federal government was ebbing. It was a big deal at the time. Now it is almost forgotten history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._Harrold ... nomination" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

- Jim